As many James Burke fans already know, his classic documentaries are available online via the JamesBurkeWeb YouTube Channel. Wouldn't it be nice, while you're watching those specials, to be able to click and learn more about a specific topic?

As part of a project for another blog, I've spent the past 5 months doing just that for every episode of both the original Connections series and The Day The Universe Changed.

Below each video are links, most of which go to Wikipedia entries, listed in order of appearance in each documentary. For those who haven't seen Connections before, I would always leave out links that reveal the ending technology to which that episode lead.

Here are the links to each documentary's annotated episodes:

Connections:
1: The Trigger Effect
2: Death In The Morning
3: Distant Voices
4: Faith In Numbers
5: Wheel of Fortune
6: Thunder in the Skies
7: The Long Chain
8: Eat, Drink and Be Merry...
9: Countdown
10: Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

The Day The Universe Changed:
1: The Way We Are
2: In The Light Of The Above
3: Point Of View
4: Matter Of Fact
5: Infinitely Reasonable
6: Credit Where It's Due
7: What The Doctor Ordered
8: Fit To Rule
9: Making Waves
10: Worlds Without End

If you've never seen James Burke's history documentaries before, I encourage you to watch them, as he zigs and zags throughout history, and really brings it alive with a great sense of humor.

If you have seen them, watch the videos above, and take the time to use the links to find out more about the topics in history that fly by so fast.

For example, there are several times in his documentaries where Burke mentions Hans Christian Ørsted, who discovered some of the most important and basic principles of electromagnetism. Without his discoveries, much of the high technology we take for granted today wouldn't be possible, and yet most people aren't even familiar with his name!

Who knows what you may learn?